I'm curious, how many here who are highly critical of financial advisors have actually used a financial advisor? If not, where did you form your negative opinion?

My mother-in-law's financial advisor has done a poor job managing her money. She has an annuity (as discussed previously, aren't good for most people) and some expensive and under performing Franklin Funds. She's retired, but has no clear idea how much she can safely withdraw. She got hooked up with her FA years and years ago, and loved him until she retired and started needing money. Now she's sort of realizing there isn't really a plan, and she's a bit confused as to what to do and a bit embarrassed that she doesn't know. Isn't getting from point A to point B what you pay an FA for? I'm wondering what this guy was doing all these years beside cashing his commission checks.

That said, she's undoubtedly better off having had an FA. She and her husband never had good paying jobs, they were thrifty and saved hard. But I'm certain they never would have gone off and bought mutual funds and invested on their own. They needed someone to do that for them. So having mutual funds for a couple decades, even bad funds, translated to more money than they ever thought they would have. That result was good.

But as RayVT showed pretty conclusively, something as small as an extra 1% drag on your portfolio absolutely murders your returns over time. It is shocking how much money it winds up costing. The FA has to give you stellar advice to over come that.